The terms “engagement survey” and “satisfaction survey” are often used interchangeably; and in my opinion, wrongfully so. They are quite different – and savvy organizations that understand the difference will always want to measure levels of employee engagement over satisfaction.

Commitment is a key component of engagement that does not exist with satisfaction. Engaged employees love their work and continually look for ways to improve their work experience, and that has implications upon your customers. Satisfied employees, meanwhile, are typically happy if things stay the same, expectations are not changed and there is certain predictability about the work environment.

I know my wife would have been quite surprised if I presented her with a “satisfaction” ring rather than a sincere proposal to share a lifetime together. The term engagement implies a joint commitment toward the long-term success of the relationship. Satisfaction implies a general sense of how one party rates the relationship.

Organizations must “satisfy” employees; it is something employers do for them. Those individuals who say they are “satisfied” may or may not be actively involved in improving outcomes and looking for ways to enhance quality and improve productivity. Satisfied employees can come to work, collect a check and go home. Back to my relationship example – would you rather have your significant other say he or she is satisfied, or would you rather hear them say they are excited and eager and 100% committed to a successful relationship?

Organizations interested in engaging their employees are seeking active involvement from their employees, and employees are seeking work environments that are most conducive for well-being, development, recognition, and effectiveness from their organization’s leaders. The commitment is shared. Both parties understand that when all employees are engaged they are actively involved in business and customer outcomes. There is a shared responsibility for success and a sense of energy, focus and commitment that all people feel for their work and the organization.

Are you satisfied with your job? That question can be answered affirmatively by many people who merely do not hate their jobs. Does your organization value you? Is your organization effective? Does your organization engage you in creatively solving problems and listen to your ideas? Does your organization spend time and money developing your skills? These questions are tougher because it measures your level of engagement. Please do not assume satisfaction surveys and engagement surveys measure the same outcomes – they do not.

How to Create Employee Satisfaction Survey Questions That Measure Engagement:

1. When creating an employee engagement survey, it’s a good idea work with experts.
2. Choose a survey with validated survey questions that are shown to reliably measure engagement. Simply picking questions from a list ignores issues of validation and reliability.
3. Avoid including random questions on topics that have very little to do with the employees’ level of engagement. For example, asking about the quality of the cafeteria food and employee parking availability is hardly linked to engagement, making these types of questions superfluous.
4. Be wise. Dig deeper and maximize your survey by asking questions that will get to the heart of the issue.

Image courtesy of LWVC – Flickr, Creative Commons (Attribution)

So without any further ado, here are the most recent tips:

1. When surveying users of particular product types, ensure users of current brands are represented in approximate proportions to market share

2. Not all surveys are created equal – Poor writing or targeting the wrong audience will likely produce inaccurate results

3. A targeted follow-up survey may help reveal causes of negative responses from employees working in the same dept

4. For a more efficient and effective meeting, gather input in advance by sending a meeting planning survey

5. Create a PowerPoint presentation of your closed-ended survey results graphs and charts

If you can’t wait for the weekly update be sure to follow SurveyGizmo on twitter to get the new tip each day. You can find the compiled lists of the Survey Tip of the Day and additional online survey tips and suggestions here at the SurveyGizmo blog as well as links to helpful SurveyGizmo tutorials. If you have any survey tips you would like to share leave us a comment or send us an email, SurveyGizmo is all about feedback.

We asked ourselves, what kind of outcome do we want for the company overall? The obvious answer is revenues and profits, but we took it down a level and looked at the key drivers of those metrics. The short answer: customers, but more specifically happy customers.

So that led us to decide that our profit sharing program should have five key features:

1. Incent employees to grow the customer base
2. Incent them equally to keep existing customers happy
3. Incent them to help the organization run efficiently
4. Be transparent and engender teamwork
5. Reward should be on-going and immediate

Growing the customer base, while satisfying existing customers

Second, we asked ourselves what we value as customers of other companies. Is it good service? An awesome product? All of the above? Obviously, it varies, but we felt that for a service like ours, both product and customer service are critical to success. The thing we valued least was salesmanship. So that means at a core level we value not just making the sale, but building a great product, and offering fantastic support to go along with it.

Each role inside SurveyGizmo contributes to the whole and we wanted to respect that. Our sales people aren’t commissioned and the wall between support and sales is a pretty small one — easily jumped over. It’s fun explaining this when we hire to either side. We wanted a plan that got everyone involved.

Efficient and Team Oriented

Finally, one of our core values is teamwork. As a small company we need to pull together and pitch-in without regard for who gets the credit. So we wanted our profit sharing plan to reward all employees, not just star performers. Based on those principles, co-founder Scott McDaniel came up with a simple, yet effective structure. So simple we can say it in one sentence. Here it is:

For every active customer we have at the end of every month, we place $2 into a pool to be shared equally by all employees.

And that’s it. New employees must be with the company for 60 days before they can participate, but that’s the only string attached. There are no complicated formulas or hidden agendas. We don’t hold back until the end of the year and hand out checks disconnected from the day to day effort. And most important, we are equally incented to delight existing customers as much as we are to get new ones.

Employee Feedback

Last week at our book club meeting we asked employees to give us their feedback on the profit sharing structure and it was overwhelmingly positive. Here are some of the reasons we like it:

• It’s very simple to understand.
• It’s transparent. Our admin console keeps a running tally of the number of customers, so all employees know at a glance roughly what to expect in their next paycheck.
• It rewards retention as well as new business. A lost existing customer is just as painful, perhaps more so, than a lost new customer.
• It serves as a natural break on hiring too far ahead of growth. Every new employee decreases everyone’s percentage slightly. So if we bring on new people and don’t gross up the difference in 60 days (when the new hire’s share kicks in), it affects everyone’s share. This forces us to ask, “How will bringing this person on help us grow our customer base?”
• It’s a terrific recruiting tool, particularly in this economy.

Of course, no bonus system is perfect. For example, you could argue that this one is flawed because it has a short-term bias. But this has worked well for us, so we’ll continue to let it ride.

How do profit sharing or bonus programs work in your companies?